Comments about ‘In our opinion: Fiscal and moral responsibility’

And yet Romney wants to lower taxes, increase defense spending, and has shown no
plan that makes any sort of serious spending cuts elsewhere to even cover the
deficit increases the first two actions would cause let alone reduce the already
large deficits.

"And although we don't endorse individual candidates, we do regularly
endorse principles that we believe will give individuals and families greater
confidence to make a positive difference in the world."

And you
just so happened to emphasize Romney throughout all this. I can't help but get a
"wink wink nudge nudge" sense out of this. I would care more... but
frankly an endorsement means nothing anyway. Utah has the last primary this time
and everyone knows this state was going to go to Romney or Huntsman anyway as
the 08 primary shows (when Romney gets almost 90% in Utah but 51% in the state
he was governor of...it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure this out).

In 1984, Bentsen, who was Mondale's VP nominee made the point about Reagen's
prosperity: "If you let me write $200 billion worth of hot checks a year,
I could create the illusion of prosperity."

I think that a good
motto for Romney may be "Honest prosperity". There is a contradiction
in economics. Consumer credit by large parts of the population is considered
good for the national economy but it is considered bad for individuals. People
are buying cars, big screen TVs, big houses. It generates jobs. Politicians
get re-elected. The day of reckoning gets passed down to the next
administration. In a sense, Obama's bad economy is a leftover from Clinton's
and Bush's re-election.

Of course, Obama is trying to kick the
reckoning down the road to someone else. But he is not any better or worse than
his predecessors. Just not as lucky.

Re: "It is a moral responsibility to believe in fiscal
responsibility."

That anyone expects to gain politically from
picking a fight with such a statement is completely beyond comprehension. If we
could just get politicians to actually believe and act on it, rather than
throwing it around as a political gimmick, we might begin healing our Nation.

It is beyond dispute that we cannot expect long-term prosperity if we
can't control demented mortgaging of our economic future. It's truly sad that
economic health of nations is currently analyzed by a "debt-revenues
ratio," and that no developed nation's ratio is currently positive, or even
neutral.

Cynical, liberal politicians, of all nationality and
political stripe -- properly esteemed below used-car-salesmen -- have exalted
national debt slavery to a political sacrament, cynically promising government
will solve our ills.

It won't. It can't. And it's WAY past time
politicians admitted as much.

At least admitting the truth that's
staring us all in the face would be a good start towards reclaiming politicians'
justifiably pitiful approval ratings.

Using the concept of "fiscal responsibility" to produce a thinly
veiled endorsement of Mitt is unconscionable given the DNews' silence on the
reckless financial practices of the Bush/Cheney administration. Where was the
DNews when Bush was running up the deficit on ill advised wars and tax cuts,
while Cheney was uttering the now famous phrase "Deficits don't
matter." If morality is equated with sound financial management is Bill
Clinton, the budget balancer, now considered ethical by the DNews?

It seems that our liberal friends disagree with the PRINCIPLE of
"honesty" and with the PRINCIPLE of "responsibility" and
with the PRINCIPLE of "integrity".

There is absolutely no
moral excuse for the nearly $5 TRILLION that Mr. Obama has added to the deficit
since he became President. Track the money and see where the bulk of it went.
It lined the pockets of his supporters, whether those supporters owned a
now-bankrupt solar energy company, whether those supporters were union members
at Chrysler and G.M., or whether those supporters were common ordinary ACORN
"employees".

That is morally reprehensible.

Lowering the tax rate will produce jobs that produce revenue from income tax;
but, liberals tell us that we need to kill the golden goose by taking more money
out of the private sector - money needed to produce those jobs. They know that
$60 BILLION per year in new tax revenue from the "rich guy" will never
pay off the $5 TRILLION added to the deficit, but they want to punish those who
have a strong work ethic. They somehow think that all money belongs to the
government and that private initiative should be taxed out of existence.

For the left wing, there is only one driving responsibility: the responsibility
to turn this Country into a welfare state.

The left seeks to tax
productive citizens into oblivion, so that the government may have more money to
fund entitlement programs for the lazy and slothful. Clearly, this is not a
sustainable fiscal program.

As part of thos quest, the left knows
that it must break down the general moral fabric of society. Thus, it downplays
adultery, fornication, and anything else that destroys traditional marriage. The
left knows that the happily married are unlikely to accept its agenda of
socialism, so it does everything it can to destroy marriage.

I take issue with the oft repeated phrase that our children will pay the price
of fiscal irresponsibility. That is wildly optimistic. Look what happened to
Greece, Ireland and Iceland when the bond market decided to impose fiscal
discipline there. It can happen almost overnight. Everything is fine and we are
happily enjoying our debt fueled prosperity until suddenly it's not fine,
confidence collapses and markets refuse to lend. This is not a problem for
future generations, the day of reckoning is closer than we think.

Let's be honest, neither mainstream Republicans or mainstream Democrats are
serious about our financial condition. The Paul Ryan plan would not balance the
budget for another 25 years. President Obama has seen an increase of $4
trillion to the national debt. President George W. Bush oversaw an increase of
$5 trillion. President Clinton never had a balanced budget, and benefitted from
the money taken from the Social Security trust fund. Mitt Romney's plan is to
cut discretionary spending by 5% and then hope for an impossible-to-pass budget
amendment. Congress doesn't need any more authority to do their jobs and
balance the budget. An budget amendment is a scapegoat for politicians
unwilling to cut anything.

Ron Paul is the only presidential
candidate that has proposed a balanced budget within his term. He will get my
vote because he is the only one willing to cut from our two biggest addictions
we have, welfare and warfare.

Since we are talking about honesty and integrity, one
thing that needs to be dropped from our national discussion is the argument that
lower tax rates will increase tax revenues via increased economic activity.

If we start with a tax rate of 15%, every 1% drop in the tax rate would
have to spur about a 9% increase in economic activity a 9 for 1 return just to
keep revenues the same. It should be obvious that this sort of economic
expansion is simply too good to be true.

Conservative economists do
not promulgate this idea and David Stockman (Reagan's Budget Director) says the
math simply does not work.

Does this give us license to tax the rich
into oblivion? No. But the rich, middle class, and likely the poor as well
cannot escape the fact that we need both increased revenues and lower budgets in
order to get us out of this mess.

If we believe otherwise we are
drinking someone's political Kool-Aid. And that someone is not likely being
honest with us.

What's disheartning here is a lack of honest discussion. To completely ignore
the reality of our circustances is very foolish. An example..GWB's deficit in
'08 was somewhere around 500billion. GWB's defict for '09 (according to the
Cato institute) was 1.9 trillion. Obama reduced it to 1.2. What happened? Did
Bush loose his mind, did he try and set up Obama..no, the recession happened.
Reality is the deficit is being driven by the two wars, Bush tax cuts,recovery
measures,TARP freddie and fannie rescue, and the economic downturn. Continuing
the rhetoric that Obama wants to turn us into a socialist nation, he's paying
off all his friends is beyond dishonest, inflmmatory, and useless.

No amount of facts or reality checks will sway the purvaors of this hyporbole
but hopefully the truly curious will listen to the reasonable arguments from
both sides of the isle and further the discussion of what does fiscal
responsibility really mean today.

A wise man once said that if something cannot go on indefinitely at some point
it will stop. The runaway spending and borrowing by the Federal Govt (egged on
by voters with their hand out) will stop sooner or later. The question is
whether we stop it before we go off the cliff or if it stops when we crash at
the bottom of the cliff. 2 Twin Lights- no sane economist will tell you
that lowering tax rates on income will increase revenue- certainly not lowering
e.g the payroll tax like Obama has done- that's just irresponsible. By the same
token, raising taxes will not necessarily increase revenues. Historically, the
Federal Govt has only collected around 20% of GDP no matter what tax rates are
on income. Not many people will work for 10 cents on the dollar. Lowering
rates on taxes on investment (capital gains, corporate, dividends etc) CAN
increase revenue by encouraging investment and growing the tax base. Why is that
such a difficult concept for the left to grasp?

How can we expect Romney to exercise "fiscal and Moral Responsibility"
when his campaign deliberately miss quotes Obama and then puts out a
explanatory statement that in a political campaign misleading
"propaganda" is acceptable. I think that the editor assumes a moral
position for Romney, probably because he is LDS, that is not well supported by
his campaign tactics or his business history.

In the grand competition for the ownership and control of the wealth of the
world, one of the weapons used is the notion of debt having an inherently moral
dimension. This moral dimension is always expressed in money, never in terms of
the quality, quantity, and worthiness of the product or service for which the
debt was incurred.

I only wish it were possible that I could pay
some of the debts and alleviated some of the pain of my mother and father as
they struggled to survive. I wonder if my future heirs will be angry at me for
my life or if, like the politicians tell us, our future children will be
burdened by our debt.

The smokescreen of debt is simply a ploy to
distract us from the true motivations of the candidates. All politicians seek
government office in order that they may provide advantage to their own
interests. Once installed they will revert to their true cause and if debt can
be used to satisfy their need, there will be more debt. And if they can divert
the benefits of government in their direction, away from people, they will do
so.

The problem with your fairytales is that they assume the
person just loses the $5 and gets nothing in return. In real life that
sometimes/often happens, but mostly in private dealings, not the government. In
fact every service provided by government is done so cheaper than if done by
private enterprise.

Assume that the person receives a $100 worth of
service or product from the person who was given the $5. How does that change
your story?

"When an individual chooses to live beyond his or her means, there is an
eventual accounting for those choices."

Well said. Certainly
we, as a country and as individuals have a moral responsibility to repay the
debts we have incurred and, in fact, to not incur that debt unless it is
absolutely necessary. The last 30 years have increased our national debt more
that 14 times what it was at the end of our first bicentennial (that's 200 years
of history.) Something has gone wrong.

And so it is important to add
to the sentence quoted above to say that "when an individual chooses to
live beyond his or her means" they need to do all they can to repay any
debts they have incurred and to obtain the means necessary to do so. Incurring
debt, while at the same time, choosing to live on less income makes no logical
sense and it certainly makes no moral sense. Willfully incurring debt and then
refusing the pay the bills one has incurred is not only childish and immature
but it is morally wrong, and in most places, illegal.

So let's
promote candidates who want to responsibly look at our national economy and
decide to pay our debts and reduce our consumption - consumption of every kind.

How does the government provide goods and services cheaper than the private
sector? Up to 80% of each dollar is wasted on all the levels that that dollar
has to pass through before getting to its final destination.

We have
been fighting the "war on poverty" since 1935. Guess what? We're
losing that war and it's not because the government has not spent trillions of
taxpayer dollars.

Look at what they have done:

1.
Controlled rent has turned neighborhoods into slums

2. Welfare has
caused millions of fathers to abandon their families rather than taking
responsibility

3. Education has produced a generation of dropouts who
camp in city parks and bemoan the fact that their are no jobs for people trained
in the liberal arts.

4. 50% of Americans who wait for a check from
Washington every month to supply them with enough money to buy dog food

Paying back debt is best done when ALL Americans are taxed at the same rate so
that ALL Americans realize that there is no "rich guy" who is going to
save them from their demands for a free lunch and for a nanny to tuck them in at
night.